Can someone tell me what goes into sausages?

[Stonehead]

For a sausage to be called a "pork sausage", it has to be at least 65% pork meat. Meat is defined as muscle. Anything else has to be declared on the label—the non-meat parts of the animal being fat, mechanically recovered meat (MRM) or rind (skin). If the packaging just says "sausage", then the sausages are going to have less than 65% meat and a lot of fat, MRM and rind.

Up to 30% of a sausage can be rusk or soya.

Up to 10% may be water, without it being declared. If there's more than 10% water it has to be declared on the label.

Around 5% is salt, flavourings, sugars, dextrose, starch, stabilisers, antioxidants, colouring, flavour enhancers and preservatives.

Most mass produced sausages using casings manufactured from collagen, often extracted from cow hide, as it's cheaper and easier to stuff by machine than gut.

The Food Safety Act has detailed compositional rules for sausages, among other things, and it should be on the FSA website but I couldn't find it in the limited time I have to spare.

[boboff]

We let the kids make some for their school project last year from the Pigs we killed.

Little Darling Daughter did Breakfast ones with Tommy Sauce and beans, Thug Boy did Olives, Mushrooms and Garlic, guess which ones were eaten first!

What I did when I made them was to do Sage and onion, but just use a cheap packet (13p) of t e s c o stuffing mix, and a little garlic, they were very very nice.

I did however find it allot off putting cutting up what could be decent roasting joints to mince into sausage mince......I don't think I would do it again.

[Cornelian]

*makes note of the fact you can put whiskey in a sausage ...*

[JulieSherris]

Oh, I LOVE tommie flavoured sausages - but I have to smile when I see them labelled as 'New Product!!' here in Ireland....
I miss the Cumberland, the Lincolnshire etc when I shop.....

There is a small butcher shop in Blackpool & he makes his own - he quite often does buffalo, ostrich, and a myriad of flavoured pork & beef..... funny what you miss, huh?

[Millymollymandy]

Ha ha hasn't the 'British' food shop arrived in the Irish Republic yet then? They are pretty popular in France. We have an Irish shop in Rennes (there's quite a chain of them in France) - it's where I got my crimbo pud, crackers and mincemeat from!

[Millymollymandy]

You two would probably actually like them because they DO have flavour

Yes you're right MMM, when I lived there I used to buy the red coloured chipolatas which I assumed were that colour through having a lot of paprika in them.
Still not a patch on a good old English butchers sausage though.

I thought about you recently when I saw some of your Petit Breton cheese in a supermarket promo magazine promoting Breton products - I still haven't seen it in the supermarket (not that I'm looking every time of course).

[Odsox]

I thought about you recently

WOW, I'm honoured

I'm very pleased that our local cheesemaker a few miles up the road makes a very passable Petit Breton lookalike.

I used to get my Dennies rashers from the Irish shop in Brest, and white pudding too.
I forgot to mention, as well as making my own sausages I now make my own white pudding too, in the style of Clonakilty pudding.

[Millymollymandy]

When were you living in Brittany then Odsox? And did you go straight to Ireland after leaving there? BTW in case you never saw my posting (somewhere!) I thanked you for your tip on eating the bolted onions straight away cos you were right and they are fine!

[Odsox]

When were you living in Brittany then Odsox? And did you go straight to Ireland after leaving there?

I worked in Landerneau from 1989 to 1994 and commuted from Gatwick - Guipavas on a 2 week on/off basis, and had a small flat (batchelor pad ) in Landivisiau.
Moved to Ireland just after that when I decided I'd had enough and retired ... only to find that I now have less time on my hands than I did before.

Glad the onions worked out OK.

[Millymollymandy]

Oh twas quite a long time ago then - do you still remember any French? I don't know that bit of Brittany as I'm up the other end and it's too far to go in a day! We did a trip around the coast of Brittany a couple of years ago (with my mum) but had to miss a lot of Finistere as we only had 5 days and there's a lot to see and a LOT of coastline in Finistere!

[red]

we make our own mutton sausages..

rosemary and garlic and vaguely Morrocan. as well as the herbs and spices we add bread.

the first ones we made were too meaty, but now we make them out of the breast of mutton, with some shoulder thrown in, and they work well.

[MKG]

What goes into supermarket sausages? Who knows? Anything, I would have thought. On the other hand, even bog-standard sausages from a reputable butcher are made from proper stuff - maybe the fatty, stringy bits, but that's the whole point of sausages. Pure meat sausages, by the way, aren't worth a candle - the rusk is an absolute necessity to hold at least some fat, because that's where the flavour is (and the texture without rusk is just plain wrong). Good sausages should not be contained in collagen skins. They should use real intestines (washed, of course). The easy way to tell is the curvature. If your sausage refuses to cook in a straight line (even after you've rolled it straight on a board) then it's good stuff. If it does cook straight, you've got collagen.

And the usual advice - DON'T prick them and DO cook them very slowly (20 minutes to half an hour). They should sizzle quietly. If they go bang, as in bangers, you're using too much heat.

Mike

[Odsox]

Good sausages should not be contained in collagen skins.

Mine must be crap then as I use collagen
Trouble is, I can't find any real casings for sale here, and our Dept of Agriculture won't allow me to import them from the UK as you keep on having outbreaks of Foot & Mouth, Swine Fever, Mad Cows disease etc etc.
Even if they are crap, they are still far superior to anything I can buy.

[MKG]

Sorry, Odsox - I didn't mean to cast aspersions on your home-made sausages. What I meant was that sausage bought from a butcher (in Britain) should not be in collagen tubes - if they can't be bothered to go that little extra and use real skins, it doesn't say a lot about what the stuffing may be made from.

So, in case anyone got the wrong end of the stick ...

Rah, Rah, Rah - up Odsox's sausage!!!!!

Mike

[Odsox]

I'm not at all sure I want the wrong end of a stick up my sausage